[Illustration:  Bambi fluttered the joy-bringing letter above her head and circled the breakfast-room in A whirl of happiness.]

“Mah good Lud, Miss Bambi, yo’ sho’ can dance better’n Jezebel!  I ’low the debil do git into yo’, the way yo’ all dance!  Go ‘way frum me!  Don’ yo’ drag me into no cunjer dance.”

“Ardelia, the gods do provide!” cried Bambi.  “Such unutterably crazy good luck—­to think of my getting it!”

“Did yo’ get a lottery prize, Miss Bambi?”

“That’s just what I got—­a lottery prize.”

“Foh the Lud’s sake!  What you gwine to do with it?”

“I am going to take Jarvis Jocelyn to New York, and between us we are going to harness Fame and drive her home.”

“Well, I don’ know who Fame is, but if she’s a hoss, wher’ yo’ goin’ to keep her when yo’ get her?  We ain’t got no barn for her.”

Bambi laughed.

“We’ll stable her all right, Ardelia, if we can catch her.  This is a secret between you and me.  Don’t you breathe it to a soul that I have won anything.”

“No, ma’am; yo’ kin trust me to the death.”

“I’ll bring you a present from New York if you won’t tell.”

She rushed off to her own room, to look over her clothes and plan.  Having married Jarvis out of hand, she would now take him on a moneymoon; they would seek their fortune instead of love.  He would peddle his play; she would honour the publisher with a visit.  She hugged herself with joy over the prospect.  She worked out various schemes by which she could break it to Jarvis and the Professor that she had money enough for a trip to New York, without saying how she got it.  Fortunately, they were not of an inquiring mind, so she hoped that she could convince them without much difficulty.  She tried out a scene or two just to prove how she would do it.  At luncheon she paved the way.

“How much more work is there on the play, Jarvis?”

“I ought to finish it this week,” he answered.  “It is good, too.  It is a first-rate play.”

“You ought to go to New York with it, and see the managers,” she said.

“Ugh!”

“Well, it’s got to be done.  You can’t teach school unless you have pupils.”

“I am not a pedant,” he protested.

“You’re a reformer, and you’ve got to get something to reform.”

“The work itself satisfies me.”

“It doesn’t satisfy me.  You have got to produce and learn before you will grow.”

“You’re a wise body for such a small package.”

“That’s the way wisdom comes.”

“Perhaps, O sibyl, you will read the future and tell me how I am to finance a trip to New York.”

“Oh, the money will be provided,” airily.

“Yes, I suppose it will.  It always is when actual need demands it, but how?”